Barry Hudock's Blog, page 19

Good news for JP2 fans

Good news for admirers of (soon to be) St. John Paul II. His personal notes, written over several decades of his life, will be published in book form on February 5 by Polish publishing house Znak. La Stampa reports that the book will be called I Am in God’s Hands: Personal Notes 1962-2003, and that “the book contains ‘the most important personal, innermost questions and moving reflections and prayers that marked [the Pope’s] everyday life.’ This includes ‘notes that show his concern for those dear to him – friends and collaborators – and for the Church that was entrusted to him.’”

Though these are the very notes that John Paul’s last will and testament called for Stanislaw Dziwisz to burn after his death, who could argue that that would have been a good idea?

I hope publication of the English translation will not be far behind.

“Do you want to honor Christ’s body?”: St. John Chrysostom on liturgy and care for the poor

I’m busy wrapping up my work translating Goffredo Boselli’s The Spiritual Meaning of the Liturgy, set for publication by Liturgical Press in the fall. It’s an exciting and beautiful book in many ways, one of them being Boselli’s rich appreciation of the theology of the early Church. The book draws from many of the greatest thinkers and pastoral leaders of that era in fruitful ways.

Here’s a great passage from St. John Chrysostom that Boselli quotes at some length in chapter nine, which is on “Liturgy and Love for the Poor”:

Do you want to honor Christ’s body? Do not neglect him when he is naked; do not, while you honor him here with silken garments, neglect Him perishing outside of cold and nakedness. For He that said “This is my body,” and by His word confirmed the fact, also said, “You saw me hungry and you did not feed me” and “Whatever you did for one of the least of these, you did for me.” This [the body of Christ on the altar] has no need of coverings, but of a pure soul; but that requires much attention. Let us learn therefore to be strict in life, and to honor Christ as He Himself desires….

For what is the profit, when His table indeed is full of golden cups, but He perishes with hunger? First fill Him, being hungry, and then abundantly deck out His table also. Do you make for Him a cup of gold, while you refuse to give him a cup of cold water? And what is the profit? Do you furnish His table with cloths bespangled with gold, while you refuse Him even the most basic coverings? And what good comes of it?

And these things I say, not forbidding munificence in these matters, but admonishing you to do those other works, together with these, or rather even before these. Because for not having adorned the church no one was ever blamed, but for not having helped the poor, hell is threatened, and unquenchable fire, and the punishment of evil spirits. Do not therefore while adorning His house overlook your brother in distress, for he is more properly a temple than the other.

That’s from a homily that Chrysostom preached on the Gospel of Matthew (not my translation, but one that’s more than a bit outdated; I cleaned up some of the most archaic style). Chrysostom was archbishop of Constantinople at the beginning of the fifth century.

Talking with Sean again

I was a guest this morning on Relevant Radio’s Morning Air with Sean Herriott show. We had a good conversation about Pope Francis’s Evangelii Gaudium. You can listen to the archived show here. (Go to January 13 on the calendar and click on the “Stream” link. I’m up at 40:55 on the timeclock, and the interview lasts about 10 minutes.)

“It’s a prison”

The threats to the water supply that began yesterday morning in southern West Virginia are only the latest in a long series of similar problems that have occured in that state as a result of coal production. As we have all enjoyed the benefits of easily available fossil fuel energy creation, the residents of this very poor state have paid the consequences.

But I can only imagine that many folks living in the central Appalachian coalfields are shaking their heads this weekend. The discovery of about 5,000 gallons of chemicals used in coal production accidentally seeping into the Elk River near Charleston, the state’s capital, happened at about 10:30 am yesterday, and it was national news by mid-afternoon. The state government, schools, and businesses all shut down, and the Department of Homeland Security is sending in bottled water on 16 tractor-trailer trucks today to distribution centers in and around Charleston. “It’s a prison from which we would like to be released,” the mayor of Charleston told CNN yesterday afternoon. And from what I have read, it’s apparently not even clear that the water is very unsafe yet; most of the response seems to be precautionary in nature. As it should be.

Well, it’s nice that everyone has lept into action. But giant multi-billion-dollar coal companies have intentionally pumped billions of gallons of more toxic stuff into the ground of some of the poorest counties of southern West Virginia for decades, leaving entire communities with dangerous and disgusting water supplies and their residents suffering long-term effects that include chronic nausea, chronic diarhhea, gum disease, dimentia, birth defects, sterility, cancer, and more.

The difference this weekend is that it happened to Charleston, where middle- and upper-class people live, where the state legislators and business leaders work and where their kids go to school.

After reading the coverage from West Virginia for about 20 minutes early this morning, I was literally feeling grateful to be able to step into a clean and safe shower. There are West Virginia families and communities that have been unable to do that for years. Anyone see a problem here?

NPR in Martin County

Today is the 50th anniverary of President Lyndon Johnson’s declaration of “unconditional war on poverty in America.” To mark the occasion, NPR has begun a series of reports on poverty in the United States today. I listened to the first of these in the car on the way to work this morning and was very glad I caught it.

I was glad to learn what the report had to offer, of course, but probably appreciated it more because I am so familiar with the place that reporter Pam Fessler chose to consider: Martin County, Kentucky (marked in red on the state map). I worked a stone’s throw from Martin County for two years (and I mean that literally: you could throw a stone across the creek into Martin County from the spot I parked my  car every day when I got to work in Kermit, West Virginia). Many of our clients at Christian Help of Mingo County were Martin County residents. (Some of them are featured in photos in the little video I made during my time there that you’ll find at the Christian Help homepage; it’s the bottom of the two videos there.)

I know well the places Fessler mentions in her report: the town of Inez, Kentucky, and the mountains, hollers, and coalfields that surround it. I don’t know personally the people she talks to, but their surnames are familiar ones in the area.

The other thing I know well, and which made me smile, is that accent in those people’s voices. After living in the region for a couple of years and getting to know the people well, hearing that accent is like pulling a warm blanket around myself. Sounds corny, I suppose, but, well, they’re good people, who welcomed and befriended my family and me without ever for a single moment treating us as the outsiders that we were.

I can tell you that Fessler does not exaggerate the poverty of the region a bit. Her report does suggest the difficulties it causes, the crucial help that government support offers, and determination of many in the region to get by as best they can by their own efforts.

What Fessler did not mention, and probably did not have time to go into, is the broad and powerful historical, economic, and business forces that brought the region to where it was on the day Lyndon Johnson visited and where it is still today. Perhaps NPR will have a chance to explore that in the reports that will follow.

Read or listen to Pam Fessler’s NPR report, “Kentucky County That Gave War On Poverty A Face Still Struggles,” here.

“God coming to love us”: Madeleine Delbrêl

What a beautiful reflection was featured yesterday in Give Us This Day , in a passage by Madeleine Delbrêl! Here’s just a snippet:

Each tiny act is an extraordinary event, in which heaven is given to us, in which we are able to give heaven to others…. Whatever it is, it’s just the outer shell of an amazing inner reality: the soul’s encounter, renewed at each moment, in which, at each moment, the soul grows in grace and becomes ever more beautiful for her God.

Is the doorbell ringing? Quick, open the door! It’s God coming to love us. Is someone asking us to do something? Here you are! It’s God coming to love us. Is it time to sit down for lunch? Let’s go — it’s God coming to love us.

That’s Delbrêl in the photo. I’d not previously heard of her. She’s identified by Give Us This Day as a French laywoman and social worker who died in 1964, at the age of 60. I’d like to learn more about her.

Evangelii Gaudium: Exploring the footnotes

Call me an encyclical nerd (as if my previous post did not establish that beyond the shadow of a doubt), but I think one fascinating and perhaps revealing aspect of Pope Francis’s apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium is its footnotes. As I read it, I repeatedly found myself intrigued by the passages from other works that Francis chooses to cite. When I was done, I decided to go back and tally his sources.

Before providing all the numbers, let me offer a summary of what stood out as most interesting to me.

Pope John Paul II is a huge presence in this document. 51 citations in a document of 217 footnotes means references to JP2 make up about 24% of them all. He is cited far more than any other source, including the final list of propositions from the Synod on the New Evangelization, which the document follows-up on.
Pope Paul VI is notable as a major presence, too. I’d be willing to bet that no document of the magisterium since Pope Paul’s death (over 35 years ago) comes close to citing him as frequently as EG.
Another major presence are the world’s national or regional episcopal conferences, various documents of which are cited with surprising frequency. Probably no other papal document is anywhere near as attentive to these sources as EG. This is a clear sign of Francis’s respect for the work of these bodies and a concrete expression of his interest in promoting “a sound ‘decentralization’” of the Church (n. 16) and his criticism of its “excessive centralization” (n. 32). We might also consider the Pope’s frequent citations of the post-synodal papal documents based upon the several Vatican-sponsored regional synods held in recent decades, mostly under the leadership of JP2, as illustrations of the same decentralizing thrust.
There are several citations from sources other than ecclesial documents, from “secular” authors like Plato and Georges Bernanos to modern theologians like Romano Guardini and an Argentinian Jesuit named Ismael Quiles. That is, even in this document that repeatedly encourages our engagement with the world, the pope engages the world beyond the official church.
On a related note, it is interesting that Francis cites Henri de Lubac, the French Jesuit theologian so influential in the work of Vatican II. De Lubac has previously been cited in two major documents from Pope Paul VI (Populorum Progressio in 1967 and Evangelii Nuntiandi in 1975) and twice in Pope Benedict’s 2007 encyclical Spe Salvi. That may make the theologian (created a cardinal by JP2) the most frequently cited unofficial/non-magisterial source in papal documents of modern times, perhaps of any time.
That he cites so many saints (9 in all, not counting the two soon-to-be-canonized popes) is interesting, but that St. Thomas Aquinas is cited far and away more than any other saint is quite striking. Pope Francis is not someone readily pegged as having a scholastic mindset, but this is a clear sign that he does.

Anyway, now the specifics. The numbers offered below indicate the number of times each source is cited. Note that this list does not include the document’s citations from Scripture, since these are made in the body of the text, and not in footnotes.

As is generally the case with post-synodal documents, this one cites the concluding list of propositions resulting from the Synod for the New Evangelization frequently: 30 times.

By the nature of the genre, papal documents most often cite documents from previous popes, and that’s certainly the case here. Popes cited, from most to least often, are

Pope John Paul II, 51 times (most cited: 1990 encyclical Redemptoris Missio, on the Church’s missionary activity)
Pope Paul VI, 25 times (most cited: 1975 apostolic exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi, on evangelization)
Pope Benedict XVI, 23 times (most cited: 2005 encyclical Deus Caritas Est, on Christian love)
Pope John XXIII, 3 times (2 citations of his opening address to the Second Vatican Council on October 11, 1962; one of the 1961 encyclical Mater et Magistra, on Christianity and social progress)

Regarding other official ecclesial documents:

Vatican II documents, 19 times (the document most often cited: Lumen Gentium, 7 times)
Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, 7 times
Catechism of the Catholic Church, 3 times
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s Libertatis Nuntius, 3 times
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s Inter Insignores, 1 time
The Code of Canon Law, 1 time

A couple of other ecclesial sources:

International Theological Commission, 3 times
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, 1 time

One interesting and notable element is the frequency with which Pope Francis quotes national/regional episcopal conferences. These include:

Latin American bishops conference (CELAM), 14 times (12 of these citations are from the 2007 Aparecida document, 2 from the 1979 Puebla document)
United States bishops conference, 2 times (one citation of its 2006 document Ministry to Persons with a Homosexual Inclination: Guidelines for Pastoral Care; one to its 2007 document Forming Conscience for Faithful Citizenship)
French bishops conference, 2 times
The bishops of Brazil, 1 time
The bishops conference of the Philippines, 1 time
The bishops of The Congo, 1 time
Indian bishops conference, 1 time
Synod of Bishops of Europe, 1 time
Not a bishops conference, but related: Italian Catholic Action, 1 time

Along the same lines, as I mentioned above, are 13 citations of post-synodal papal documents based upon Vatican-sponsored regional synods held in recent decades. These include citations of

Ecclesia in Asia, 6 times
Ecclesia in Oceania, 3 times
Ecclesia in Africa, 2 times
Ecclesia in America, 1 time
Ecclesia in Medio Oriente, 1 time

Pope Francis likes to cite saints. In addition to how often he does, also striking is how many times Thomas Aquinas gets a nod.

St. Thomas Aquinas, 14 times
St. Augustine, 2 times
St. John of the Cross, 1 time
St. Ireneaus, 1 time
St. Ambrose, 1 time
St. Cyril of Alexandria, 1 time
St. John Chrysostom, 1 time
St. Therese of Liseaux, 1 time
St. Isaac of Stella, 1 time

Finally, also striking is the number of citations to sources other than ecclesial documents or saints. These include one citation each from:

Georges Bernanos (French writer, died 1948): EG cites his 1936 novel, The Diary of a Country Priest
John Henry Newman (British theologian, died 1890): his collected letters
Thomas a Kempis (German priest/writer, died 1471): The Imitation of Christ
Henri de Lubac (French theologian, died 1991): his 1953 book The Splendor of the Church (that’s the title of the English translation; original French title was Meditation sur l’Eglise)
Romano Guardini (German theologian, died 1968): his book 1950 book The End of the Modern World
Ismael Quiles, SJ (Spanish-Argentinian theologian, died 1993): his 1981 book Filosofia de la educación personalista
Plato (Greek philosopher, died 348 BC): Gorgias, dated 380 BC
V.M Fernandez: I’m unsure of the identity of this person, and internet research has not helped; Francis cites an address offered at the First National Congress on the Social Doctrine of the Church (location not noted) in 2011
Luis Laso de la Vega (Mexican author, 16th century): his Nican Mopohua , an account of the appearances of Mary at Guadalupe

On finishing Francis’s The Joy of the Gospel: I have read a lot of papal documents…

I’ve been a little surprised by how many times I have read comments about Pope Francis’s Evangelii Gaudium in recent weeks that start out something like this: ”I have to admit, I’ve never read a papal encyclical the whole way through. I usually skim them and rely on what’s reported about their contents in the Catholic Press. But boy, once I got started on Evangelii Gaudium, I could not stop. It was the first one I really read all the way through.”

This has come not just from regular lay folks, who would not be expected to pore over church documents, but “professional Catholics” who know a lot about what’s in these documents. (Not that I much blame them, I suppose; these things are typically not exactly beach reading.)

So let me start out – in honesty and, if possible, humility — like this: I have read, over the last 20 years or so, a lot of papal documents: old ones and new ones; encyclicals, apostolic letters, apostolic exhortations; front to back, opening greeting to concluding blessing. Dozens and dozens of them. I have studied them, prayed with them, taught from them. I have done this mainly out of a fascination and a deep appreciation of the role of the magisterium in articulating, proclaiming, and defending the Gospel of Jesus.

Don’t get me wrong: I fully realize that these documents are not Spirit-breathed like we would say the Bible is, that encyclicals are a fairly new genre on the landscape of church history, and that there is plenty in them that reflects the times in which they were written or the limitations of the popes who signed them as much as the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Still, they are an important way that the church of God has proclaimed the Good News — sometimes in compelling or beautiful or influential ways — to the people of a given time, and in some ways, to the ages.

I have sometimes been deeply moved and inspired by reading these documents. I have distinct memories, for example, of paging through Paul VI’s Evangelii Nuntiandi, John Paul II’s Evangelium Vitae, and also his Tertio Millennio Adveniente with a palpable excitement, inspiration, and — it would not be exaggerating to say — awe. I have read others with great disappointment and frustration; Pope Benedict XVI’s Caritas in Veritate, for example, offers important and challenging teaching in prose that is unsatisfying and at times impenetrable, and John Paul II’s Ordinatio Sacerdotalis is disappointing for its uncharacteristic (of JP2) failure to offer a thorough and compelling explanation for the reasons behind its teaching. Mostly, though, they are sometimes interesting, sometimes boring, often dry.

All this to say: I have read a lot of papal documents, and there is no papal document quite like Pope Francis’s Evangelii Gaudium.

There are, admittedly, a few moments where EG is overly verbose and dense. What the heck was Francis thinking when he came up with that line about “self-absorbed promethean neopalagianism” (n. 94)? He makes in that paragraph a powerful and important point that is probably obscured by the prose.

But far more often, EG is personal, simple, and even downright lyrical. There’s this, for example:

This is why I want a Church which is poor and for the poor. They have much to teach us. Not only do they share in the sensus fidei, but in their difficulties they know the suffering Christ. We need to let ourselves be evangelized by them. The new evangelization is an invitation to acknowledge the saving power at work in their lives and to put them at the centre of the Church’s pilgrim way. We are called to find Christ in them, to lend our voice to their causes, but also to be their friends, to listen to them, to speak for them and to embrace the mysterious wisdom which God wishes to share with us through them. (n. 198)

And this:

Thanks to our bodies, God has joined us so closely to the world around us that we can feel the desertification of the soil almost as a physical ailment, and the extinction of a species as a painful disfigurement. (n. 215)

And good heavens, this:

We love this magnificent planet on which God has put us, and we love the human family which dwells here, with all its tragedies and struggles, its hopes and aspirations, its strengths and weaknesses. The earth is our common home and all of us are brothers and sisters. (n. 183)

And one more:

We have a treasure of life and love which cannot deceive, and a message which cannot mislead or disappoint. It penetrates to the depths of our hearts, sustaining and ennobling us. It is a truth which is never out of date because it reaches that part of us which nothing else can reach. Our infinite sadness can only be cured by an infinite love. (n. 265)

For those who might be uncomfortable with the church’s social teaching and wonder why the church can’t just stay out of politics and economics and stick to helping me save my own soul — and we have seen many such comments in the media, both secular and Catholic, since this document’s appearance — EG offers an answer that is crisp and clear: “The kerygma has a clear social content: at the very heart of the Gospel is life in community and engagement with others” (n. 177). Not a peripheral matter, not distinct from the real concerns of the foundational Christian doctrines, and not the unfortunate hobby of misguided liberals: life in community is at the very heart of the Gospel. “Our redemption has a social dimension” (n. 178). The Catholic faith is “the Gospel of fraternity and justice!” (n. 179). “God wants his children to be happy in this world too” and forthat reason “Christian conversion demands reviewing especially those areas and aspects of life related to the social order” (n. 182).

It is true that there’s very little in this encyclical that has not been said before by Pope Benedict, Pope John Paul II, Pope Paul VI, Pope John XXIII, Pope Leo XIII, Blaise Pascal, St. John Chrysostom, St. Augustine, Jesus, St. Paul, Jeremiah, or Amos (to name just a few that I thought of repeatedly while reading). But he says it in a fresh and vibrant way that is made even more compelling and effective by his own personal actions and ministerial “style.”

There will be more to say about EG later, no doubt. For now a word of deep appreciation and thanksgiving. Also a prayer that its words sink more deeply into my own heart and marrow. I would be a changed person if they did.

Whitehead at Crisis: Person of the Year? Phooey!

What if someone had told you one year ago that Time magazine would name the Pope its Person of the Year for 2013, and Crisis magazine would be pissed off about it? What a difference a year makes.

In an article on the Crisis website posted today, Kenneth D. Whitehead does his very damndest to minimize the significance of Time‘s naming Pope Francis as the 2013 Person of the Year.

Whitehead says the Time nod ”used to be a kind of national test of the prominence and importance of a public figure” (my italics), but asks — in a sentence that’s hard to read without a petulant tone in your head – “Who even still reads Time today?” He goes on for paragraphs about how the print magazine industry has declined; Whitehead, after all, could not even find a copy of Time at his local drugstore.

Whitehead also makes much of the fact that some of the other candidates for this year’s designation from Time were people of more questionable character: the “law-breaker and a fugitive from justice” Edward Snowden; the “proud lesbian” Edith Windsor; Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad; and Ted Cruz — not the right-wing extremist, mind you, but the guy whom ”the magazine’s editors certainly do see … as a right-wing extremist rather than any kind of an honoree.” (He forgot Miley Cyrus. I had read Miley was a runner-up, too.)  ”Indeed,” Whitehead writes, ”it becomes somewhat questionable how much of an honor the award really is when we consider what the pope’s competition was.”

Whitehead does generously allow that “the fact that he was selected no doubt does represent a positive outcome of sorts” (my italics). “Still,” he goes on, ”it is hard to give much credit to Time’s estimate of what is truly important or has had a significant impact on our lives in 2013. That the bishop of Rome and earthly head of the Catholic Church was able to prevail in this particular company surely cannot in and of itself be considered one of the more salient accomplishments of the papacy in modern times.”

So yes, it’s lovely that Pope Francis was able to get the Time nod, we can suppose. But first of all, what does Time know, and second of all, he is the Vicar of Christ, dammit, so what would you expect? Popes deserve Person of the Year awards every day with their breakfast cereal, just because they’re popes; Time shouldn’t even need another reason.

Ah, the reason. Whitehead is none too pleased with the reason Francis got this designation. He writes, “Like many commentators, Time assigns great weight to the emphasis that Pope Francis has placed on mercy, healing, forgiveness, poverty, simplicity, and the like; this emphasis, along with his personal, informal, almost casual style, certainly has attracted renewed attention to the Church and perhaps even to the Church’s authentic message.”

Note that it’s “commentators” — not Catholics, Christians, or even people — who value such stuff. And I love that perhaps near the end of the last sentence there! Francis’s simplicity and humility might possibly have something to do with the Gospel, but this surely has little to do with anything.

And of course, Whitehead does not miss the fact that part of the interest that many have in the Pope is the hopes they bear that some Church teachings that they don’t like will change. Whitehead: “Unlike many of those who have been attracted to what Time calls the ‘tonal shift’ of Pope Francis, however, the journal does sort of understand that the substance of Church teaching is not going to change, indeed cannot change. Pope Francis does not have the power to change it, even if he wanted to, which he manifestly does not.” Of course, he manifestly does have the power to develop Church teaching, and development of doctrine has at times come in forms that most people-in-the-pew (and even the highest Church authorities who had previously condemned such proposed development as heresy) would say looks a lot like change. But never mind that.

Whitehead goes on, letting us in on what he really thinks of Francis with this sentence: “Typically, [Pope Francis] even reaffirms his commitment to Church teaching at the very same time that he is delivering himself of the kind of remarks that have elicited yet another version of ‘hope and change’—yes, that’s what it is!—at least in the minds of some.” There you have it. Pope Francis is, in the mind of Whitehead (a defender of Paul Ryan and one-time Reagan Administration official) a lot like Barack Obama. We know what that telegraphs to readers of Crisis.

Whitehead concludes his commentary on the Time honor by acknowledging that Pope Francis is having and inevitably will have an effect on the life of the Church:

The pope necessarily does establish a tone, and whatever he says does have an effect; but it does not change the substance of what has been preserved and handed down through the centuries by the successors of Peter and the bishops in union with them. Pope Francis too continues in this same line; and meanwhile, the Church herself goes on as before virtually everywhere, sanctifying souls and carrying out her myriad good works, even in the midst of the sins that her members also, unhappily, commit. Pope Francis himself regularly goes to confession, after all, just as Catholics must.

Somehow that sounds a lot like “despite the fact that Francis, a sinner, will have an effect on the Church, the Church will survive.”

Whitehead covers all this ground before he even gets to the fact that The Advocate also named Francis Person of the Year. Thankfully, he does not go on at length on that, but he does say that the designation represents “jaw-dropping wishful thinking.” I’m not sure how jaw-droppingly wishful The Advocate is, since the publication was quite clear in its article that Francis opposes gay marriage. Though it does indeed express a hope that the Pope’s new tone might possibly lead to acceptance of gay marriage, what it seems most impressed by is that Francis has “spoke[n] compassionately” about gays. And that’s something that ought not be wishful.

And speaking of jaw-dropping, have a look at the comments at the bottom of Whitehead’s article, if you’re brave. Scary stuff.

Pope Francis’s Prayer for Families

Introduced today by the Holy Father in Saint Peter’s Square:

Jesus, Mary and Joseph,

in you we contemplate

the splendour of true love,

to you we turn with trust.

Holy Family of Nazareth,

grant that our families too

may be places of communion and prayer,

authentic schools of the Gospel

and small domestic Churches.

Holy Family of Nazareth,

may families never again

experience violence, rejection and division:

may all who have been hurt or scandalized

find ready comfort and healing.

Holy Family of Nazareth,

may the approaching Synod of Bishops

make us once more mindful

of the sacredness and inviolability of the family,

and its beauty in God’s plan.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph,

graciously hear our prayer.